from the lame dept

It's really amazing that companies don't recognize that taking away features to charge for them almost never goes over well. Adding features that can be charged for will work, but removing features that were free and widely used is rarely a good idea. It appears that Verizon is still learning that lesson. The company apparently provides some hosting space for all of its customers, and until recently allowed subscribers to access that space via FTP. However, it recently announced that it was doing away with FTP access and instead, users were now forced to make use of Verizon's own clunky web tools interface. That's quite a nuisance for some users.

But where this gets more interesting is that it appears Verizon is simply lying about the reasons why. The company is telling users it's for "security" reasons. But... while it's discontinuing FTP for its regular subscribers, those who pay up for a higher level hosting plan (starting at $5.95 per month) seem to still be able to use FTP. In other words, it's only a security problem if you're not paying -- suggesting that the "security" is more about Verizon's revenue than the security of your content. And while it's true that unencrypted FTP can have some security issues (mainly on untrusted networks), there are ways to deal with that with secure, encrypted FTP offerings.